They drove back to Fursey the pretty route to avoid Sunday drivers on the main roads. Alan knew the road well from when he had worked on a follow-up survey of fen dykes in the landscapes south and east of Peterborough in the late 1990s. It was during the original survey of the early 1980s that the now famous site of Flag Fen had been discovered. Alan frowned. He’d recently been helping Steve Grant establish closer links with them, and it had all been looking very promising. Now everything had been cancelled. What a waste.
As they approached Fursey from the west, they could just see the ruined tower of the abbey church protruding above the high, and dead straight, banks of the Padnal Delph. The road swung round a right-angled corner by a row of a dozen gnarled and pollarded willows. Beyond was a sign: Private Road to Padnal Delph IDB Pumping Station. Alan indicated left. Harriet looked at him, surprised.
‘You’re turning off?’
He smiled, and placed a hand reassuringly on her knee. ‘Wait and see.’
Beyond the pumping station, where Alan had met the chief engineer a few weeks ago, the road suddenly deteriorated and the Fourtrak pitched its way through ridges and flooded pot holes. Then the land around rose perceptibly and suddenly they were driving past ash trees and shrubs. The road surface had improved, too. They were now on the Isle. On their right another sign read: Isle Farm, 300 Yards Ahead and just beyond was a ‘For Let’ notice on behalf of a large local estate agent.
They drew to a halt in front of a substantial, wisteria-clad Italianate farmhouse, probably built around 1850.
Harriet turned to Alan. ‘Are you mad, Alan, we couldn’t possibly afford such a place. It must cost thousands a month.’
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘I just wanted to see the place that had motivated a man to kill. It must be pretty special.’
Lane knew the nice lady at the estate agents and had persuaded her that Alan could be trusted to look around on his own. When she gave him the keys she included a bit of paper with the burglar alarm code. Alan opened the back door and turned it off. From there they passed through to the large kitchen, equipped, of course, with a deep-red four-oven Aga. There was a fashionable island worktop in the centre of the room on which Alan placed a shopping bag.
‘Wow,’ Harriet’s face was alight. ‘What a fabulous kitchen!’
They explored the house from top to bottom, including the four bedrooms, three fitted with en-suite showers or bathrooms. But compared with Fursey Hall it was quite a modest house, really. The views from the ground floor were limited to the south-west by the banks of the Delph, but from upstairs they were absolutely superb, with the ruins of Fursey Abbey in the middle distance, and further away, but nonetheless dominating everything, the vast mass of Ely Cathedral and its single slender tower. Although they both knew it was an illusion, the view seemed to change from every window.
He found they were holding hands in the master bedroom, standing in front of the large Venetian window.
‘Do you know what,’ Alan said softly. ‘That really is a view to die for.’
It wasn’t meant to be humorous and she didn’t take it as such. There were tears in her eyes as she said, ‘How sad. How very, very sad.’
* * *
Back in the kitchen, Alan lifted a flask from the shopping bag and poured coffee into their insulated site mugs: hers in pink shiny plastic and his Nikon lens lookalike.
Harriet smiled as she asked, ‘Do you like that mug?’
‘Yes. It’s my favourite. I take it everywhere. And I’ve got the lens it’s modelled on.’
‘Yes, I know you do.’
Her eyes were staring deep into his.
It was like an electric shock. How could he have been so stupid? The mug had arrived last Christmas by post. Anonymously. He had split up with Harriet acrimoniously a year earlier. It had never occurred to him that she had sent it.
He put the mug down, took her in his arms and held her for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually they drew apart.
‘Isn’t the world strange, Alan. This place has led to the death of three people, yet the man who killed them is still alive and the woman who may have helped her gambling husband to die, is no longer with us. Is that justice?’
Alan took a long sip from his mug of surprisingly warm coffee. He looked out of the window, where a red sun was approaching the top of the Delph bank. He thought for some time.
‘I’d have agreed with you a few days ago, Harry, but I’m not so sure now. I don’t see how she could ever have lived with herself, because I’m convinced that deep down she loved John. She must have done, to have put up with his bad habits for so long. Her suicide laid that ghost to rest.’
He paused to screw the lid on his emptied mug. His gaze was on the slowly fading light that bathed the tall lime trees beyond the orchard, but his mind was in the exposed, wet fields around Fursey.
‘But Sebastian,’ he continued slowly, ‘will never achieve any sort of peace or resolution. Every day of his life will be torture. And he will be his own tormentor – and believe me, they’re the worst. They know all your fears and weaknesses and how to exploit them in the cruellest ways imaginable.’
He shuddered. It was a horrible thought.
They shut the back door. Harriet was wiping her eyes. Alan was grim-faced. Together they had glimpsed heaven and hell. And all in one Fenland farmhouse.